Our local fruit and veg industry has taken a real battering this year.
Extensive floods around Australia have decimated many crops, and the ones that have survived have been waterlogged and expensive. Last week’s pickings at the markets were slim – Pete tasted and rejected peaches and plums, apples were spotty, and there wasn’t a whole lot of greenery that caught our eye.
I did bring home some fabulous wild rocket from Roula, and a few Lebanese cucumbers, but my salad was looking quite pathetic, despite my attempts to bolster it with chick peas, salami offcuts and pomegranate seeds that I found in the freezer…
Our garden is looking a little worse for wear as well, but undeterred, the boys went out to see what they could find. I was surprised and delighted when they came in with a colander of greens for our lunch – they’d picked basil, continental parsley, a few leaves from self-sown lettuces, sorrell, purslane, a few beans and a sprig of very young spearmint.
The finished salad was dressed simply with a little olive oil and white balsamic vinegar.
Lesson learnt – if we look carefully, the garden will always feed us.
Lunch inspired me to head outside with my camera. I’m not sure how many more garden pics we’ll get as we head into the cooler months, so I wanted to take some photos while I still could!
A few of our tomatoes have survived the wilt – all the seedlings we planted died off, but half a dozen self-sown plants are proving virus resistant, so we’ll make sure to collect seeds from these if they ever fruit…
The next round of basil is already looking promising!
And as a result of the recent rains – our lilly pilly is rosy with new growth!
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
Let us cultivate our garden.Candide (1759), by Voltaire
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
That was one of my French books when I did French at school. I love Candide and I love your garden foraging boys. Ottolenghi would be proud to serve that salad in his restaurant I reckon.
How tall is that Lilly Pilly tree? I love that name, wish I’d called one of the dogs Lilly Pilly xxxx
Jo, it’s really big! It’s the same tree the cuckoo-like Koel was perched on top of a couple of months ago. Pete thinks it’s probably five or six metres tall…
Now that I live in Manhattan, I only miss the garden I used to have in the country. You are so blessed. Beautiful photographs
Norma, we are indeed blessed! Noticed you’ve moved your blog to WP – all the best with the big move!
You are so inspiring, Celia!
Since spring is around some corner or the other here, I’m planting lettuces and thinking of spinach and peas.
Hopefully, I won’t have to be totally dependent for my greens on markets for too much longer.
Thanks for the pictures- they are the stuff gardeners dream of!
Heidi, it really is selective photos – much of the garden is bare. But as I said, if we look closely enough, there’s always something.. :) Look forard to your photos in June/July when we’re in the middle of winter! :)
Your salad looks amazing and the basil is going great guns!
Helen, thank you! I can’t tell you how much basil is growing – it’s been growing like a weed this year!
There’s nothing like eating home-grown, is there?
We’ve been enjoying purple sprouting broccoli since January (we planted an early variety) and it’s almost even more delicious having read about the shortages in supermarkets because of poor growing conditions!
Pete harvested a whole kilo earlier this week, as it was starting to go to flower, so it was last chance. And he made some more of the fabulous PSB and stilton soup he did the previous week. He’s frozen it in portions!
YUM!
Kavey, I remember your purple broccoli! I can’t believe it’s still going – what a long season you got out of it! Love the idea of blue cheese in soup! :)
Voltaire is one of my favourite writers and the thought of all that basil…for pesto. Yum
Oz, surprisingly we’ve made very little pesto this year – we’ve been throwing basil in just about everything else though!
Beautiful salad!!! I’ve never had such greens as sorrell, rocket or purslane (unless they’re known by another name). I wish I could try some of those greens! Wonderful looking basil!! Do you pinch off any flower stalks too? Since we’re heading into spring I’m looking forward to going to the nursery to pick out my herb plants. Oh, how I love my fresh herbs. I’ve never had luck starting things from seed.
Melanie, thank you! Rocket is also arugula, and sorrel and purslane are often garden weeds.. :)
I pinch the flowers off the basil as we’re using it, but once we’ve moved onto the next plant, we just let it go to seed – the bees love the flower stalks! Interestingly, our plants didn’t die after they flowered, and some of them are putting out new growth again from the base!
Basil is one of the only things I’ve had great success with recently. Good thing I love pesto!
Your salad looks delicious and as always I love the garden pics.
Claire, thank you! I’m glad you’ve had luck with the basil too this year!
My garden is in the same state or worse but I can find enough greens for a very small salad. You’ve inspired me to add chickpeas which are in the freezer for hommus. Our cherry tomatos are sown by the dog who picks them for himself and are coming up all over the place. They are very sweet. I’ve just put in some seed for brocoli, cauli, red cabbage and spinach but if they don’t come up I’m buying seedlings!
Jo, good luck with the seeds! We’re a bit behind, but we’ll be putting in peas and garlic soon, as well as another round of potatoes.
Thank you for the kind offer of rocket seeds, but we’re good – our friend Ian gave me some of his wild rocket seed when we last saw him, which we’ve planted. Apparently wild rocket is a different variety to the regular stuff on sale – smaller, more wibbly-edged leaves. We’ll have to wait and see what they look like when they come up! :)
I forgot to add I have plenty of rocket seed and it grows easily – would you like some?
What riches Celia, a bit of foraging produced a beautiful salad after all!
I’m glad you’ve got such lovely veggies, I wonder if the rest of Australia will get scurvy with the fruit and veg shortage!! I’d better start picking my wild garden greens too :)
Becca, it’s so true – very little of what the boys brought in would qualify as “salad greens” – the purslane and sorrel are weeds (even though we’ve been trying to cultivate them), the basil, spearmint and parsley are herbs. It’s wonderful what’s out there if we really look hard! :)
I have given up on tomatoes here after 3 years of wilt, despite moving the plants each season.
Very disappointing.
Now those garden pickings for lunch look wonderful. That basil looks so healthy and not a nibble to be seen. Every time I’ve tried to grow it in pots, there is a snail and slug party. I gave up.
Amanda, that’s a shame! Linda Woodrow suggested I seek out virus resistant strains, which is what we’re going to try and do. Of course, that rules out almost all heirloom varieties…
Brydie, I think it’s to do with volume – there are so many other things for the bugs to eat that they tend to leave the basil alone! ;-)
I so agree about the poor state of fruit and veggies at the moment. I prefer to support our local green grocer instead of the Coles next door. But oh dear. The pineapple fermented underneath in one day. The rockmelon was underripe and dry. And the greens all looked so wilted and very sad. Coles actually had quite a few empty shelves. Not good. Unlike the veggies in your garden. Your basil looks amazing and so fresh and vibrant – I can almost smell it.
I just ran and took a peek at the lilly pilly through my kitchen window and sure enough, it’s rosy with new growth. Hope you have a good weekend Celia.
Salad looks great and you’re lucky you still have things to find in the garden..I feel another pesto coming..So true how the fruit and veg is at a tragic stage here in Oz….I feel so sorry for our banana growers…supporting them still by buying a couple of banana’s at Aus$12.98 a kilo…I think we should still support them! I only wonder how much a kilo the farmers are getting! x
Oh yes. As a lettuce and salad lover I’ve had to shift my eating habits a little recently. Do you have any exciting winter produce planted in your garden?
Mariana, I’m so glad all this rain has at least helped both out lilly pillys! But so sad all the fruit and veg is suffering so much at the moment. We really tried to buy produce at the markets last week, but truly, so much of it was quite sad. And if it’s not good at the produce markets, it almost certainly isn’t going to be great at the supermarkets. Hopefully things will improve soon…
Yvette, I actually made pesto tonight – the old fashioned way with a mortar and pestle. It was much better than when I just whiz it up in the food processor, so I’m feeling quite chuffed! :)
Lorraine, potatoes are going in this weekend, strawbs are looking quite good, and peas will go in very soon. Oh, and we’ve just sown some wild rocket as well!
You’re just my hero. Lovely, lovely gardens. And despite the horrible weather you’ve had, it does look as if things are flourishing. (We’ve still got snow in the yard. Sigh.)
Chick peas are my favorite legume. I like them in soups, on salad, toasted in the oven with olive oil and salt as a snack and of course, hummus.
It is nice to eat from your garden, even if it’s just a sprinkle of ingredients. Last night I picked cilantro, spring onions, red chili and a lime to go in the stirfry. Kicked it up a notch.
Maz
Celia, tell me about freezing pomegranate seeds!
Vix, I won pomegranates on Lorraine’s blog ages ago, and took all the seeds out and just froze them in a small container. It’s probably best to freeze them on a tray first to stop them all clumping together, but I just bashed them a bit and they all came apart, like frozen corn kernels! They were great in the salad.. :)
Beautiful, Celia.
I find that the self-sown plants are usually so much more resilient to pests and diseases, which is great for lazy gardeners such as myself ;)
Chris, that is good to know, thank you! :)
I have never had any luck with growing basil. Mum has a great pot of it at her place though that I always pick from when I go there. Yours looks great as well.
Susan, thank you, so many things aren’t growing, but the basil just won’t stop! :)
Sort of sad to hear of garden demise, since ours are only now just starting a new season – are you guys able to keep some stuff growing during winter?